The Orphan and the Mouse (2 page)

The stamp was kind of interesting, Jimmy thought, like a
tiny window to a faraway place and time. Jimmy guessed the Red River must be in Minnesota, and a hundred years ago pioneers must have used carts like this for hauling. An ox was like an oversized cow, it looked like. They didn't use carts in Minnesota anymore, did they? Trucks and trains more likely, same as everywhere else.

Thinking he'd look up the Red River in Miss Ragone's atlas, Jimmy went to put the stamp on Mrs. George's desk.

Then he had a thought.

Mrs. George would know he was the one who put it there. No one else could have. What if she asked him about it? What if she thought he'd been messing around with her stuff?

Jimmy didn't trust Mrs. George. One time she'd accused him of eavesdropping, lost her temper, and boxed his ears. Later, when she realized her mistake, she gave him the plum job of bringing in her paper, but she never apologized.

Now Jimmy hesitated. Keeping the stamp was out of the question. He was no thief, and anyway he had no one to send a letter to.

What if he put the stamp someplace Mrs. George wouldn't notice right away—like, uh . . . inside the little box with the pattern of white triangles on the lid?

Jimmy opened the lid, noticed the single, old-fashioned gray metal key inside, laid the stamp beside it, closed the lid, and replaced the box exactly where it had been before.

With any luck, it would be a good long while before anybody found that stamp.

Bad things are forever happening to mice, which is why the well-run colony has in place an MMRP (Missing-Mouse Response Plan). Thus, Zelinsky was barely an hour overdue when scouts were dispatched to look for traces and, if necessary, perform the grim duty of retrieval. Soon after that, spy network staffing levels were doubled to increase monitoring of human conversations. Any mention of
mice
, or worse,
exterminator
, would be reported immediately to the chief director.

Shortly after dawn, the scouts returned to report they'd seen no sign of Zelinsky. What they did bring back were the pictures he had stolen, four of them found scattered on the rug of the boss's office.

“Only four?” Chief Director Randolph asked the squad leader.

“Only four,” the squad leader replied with more confidence than he felt. Having heard the footsteps of a human pup, his squad had rushed through their final sweep. He hoped they hadn't missed anything.

“So be it,” said Randolph, who then confiscated the pictures, saying they were necessary to the investigation, when
in fact, he, the squad leader, and every other Cherry Street mouse knew they would find their way into his personal collection.

Two weeks passed, and the spy network reported no mention either of mice or of exterminators among their human neighbors. Randolph ordered resumption of normal staffing levels. Every mouse breathed easier.

At this same time, Zelinsky's bereft family hosted a memorial ceremony attended by all the colony's luminaries, including the chief director himself. As was traditional, a modest feast was offered and heartwarming stories were told. From them emerged a portrait of Zelinsky as solid citizen, loving father, and unlikely art thief.

Any pup could tell you an art thief had to be brazen, bold, and daring. The epitome was Zelinsky's immediate predecessor, Andrew, who had been nothing short of a legend. Zelinsky was brave, certainly, but also staid and conventional. In fact, shortly before Zelinsky's death, these qualities of his prompted a quarrel between him and his mate, Mary.

What led up to the quarrel was this.

A week before Zelinsky disappeared, a delegation of disgruntled mice had come to him with a formal request that he challenge Randolph for the chief directorship.

Randolph by this time had been in power for nine generations. His principal interest, critics said, was no longer the good of the colony but rather the good of Randolph. Just look at the number of pictures he had appropriated for himself.
The size of his personal collection was an affront to every right-thinking mouse.

New blood was needed!

And who better for the job than Zelinsky? He was young, big-eared, and energetic. He had a high-visibility job. He was honest.

Mary had been exhilarated by the prospect. She would advise her mate, and she was full of ideas for colony improvements: Galleries should be established to make the art collection available to all; additional story auditors should be trained and deployed in the nurseries; the long-stalled Sentry Communications System for Colony Defense (SCSCD) should be completed and deployed at last.

And that was just the beginning. Together, she and Zelinsky would lead the colony boldly into the future!

Or not.

Because when Mary had shared this vision with her mate, he had wiped his whiskers with exasperating thoroughness and said, “Why would I want the headaches? Our family has a clean, cozy nest and a growing collection of pictures. Let some other fellow challenge Randolph. For myself, I am comfortable with my life as is.”

Mary had reasoned, squeaked, and pleaded . . . to no avail. In her frustration, she had called her mate “dull as daisy stems,” which hurt his feelings. Later she apologized; they touched noses, made up, and agreed no one would ever know of their quarrel.

Zelinsky disappeared the following day. He had not yet declined to stand for chief director. Only he and Mary knew that that had been his intention.

Time passed; spring came. In May the Cherry Street directorate made an unexpected proposal. Would Mary Mouse care to serve as art thief?

Every mouse knew that the directors had been having a hard time finding a new thief, but none had seen Mary's appointment coming. True, her father and grandfather had both held the post, and she was known to be agile and quick thinking. Still, the idea of a female art thief took some getting used to. This was 1949, and even among mice, ideas about appropriate gender roles were more rigid than they would later become.

Mary hesitated before accepting. Her pups had recently lost their father. Wasn't this too great a risk? But when she called a family conference, the girls told her to take the job.

“Art's important, Mama. The colony always wants more. You would be a great thief, and so you should do it,” Millie said.

“Besides,” said Matilda, “it'll be neat having our mama be art thief. The other pups will envy us.”

“Hush, Matilda.” Margaret shoved her litter mate with her tail. “That's not what matters, is it, Mama?”

“What matters to me is the three of you,” said Mary. “But to be honest, I want to serve the colony. Also, a new challenge might help me get over losing your papa.”

“Then you have to do it,” the pups agreed. And so it was
decided. Mary Mouse became the eleventh art thief in colony history. Soon some mice were saying she was a better thief than her mate had been—if not, of course, up to Andrew's standard.

By midsummer, Mary's position was secure. What's more, the contingent of mice who had sought out her husband began to speak of Mary as a candidate for chief director.

No delegation had yet approached her, but Randolph had heard the rumors. Thus the Cherry Street colony was ripe for political upheaval on the Saturday night in August when Mary Mouse set out to learn her new assignment.

Shortly after dusk, Mary entered the chief director's nest and found him reclining on a divan built to his own specifications from shoebox pieces and sofa stuffing. The divan was impressive for its size, but more so for the number of pictures decorating it. There were two dozen at least, still only a fraction of the chief director's collection.

The Cherry Street colony's fascination with art had begun some thirty generations before, when an ordinary forager called O'Brien happened upon a picture on the dining room floor. It was blue, its subject the head of a full-grown human female.

Little suspecting the sensation it would cause, O'Brien had brought the picture back and—using the glue that conveniently coated the back—affixed it to a wall in his nest. The neighbors came to see, then their neighbors, then mice from every sector. Up till then, no mouse had ever looked so closely at a human face, and soon O'Brien's picture was all any mouse could squeak about.

What was the blue lady looking at? What was she thinking? Why had she arranged the fur on her head that way? What was the significance of the white ruffle around her neck?

Then—inevitably—“Where can we get pictures of our own?”

Responding to the popular will, the directors dispatched scouts who identified the picture's provenance as the plateau atop the boss's desk. When in time it was discovered that new pictures appeared there at intervals, the job of art thief was created.

Even as the mice craved pictures, they knew they dared not be greedy. If they took too many, the boss would investigate, jeopardizing the safety of the entire colony. For this reason, supply never met demand, and mice like Randolph hoarded pictures the same way a miser hoards money.

Now Mary took a moment to admire the variety and color
of the pictures adorning Randolph's divan before raising her whiskers and dipping her snout in deferential greeting. “Chief Director,” she said.

“Mary Mouse,” he replied. The runt of his litter, Randolph had spent a lifetime compensating with comestibles. Randolph's admirers considered his girth, in particular the fat rolls around his neck, to be visible signs of his outsize position in the colony. Mary, not an admirer, found the fat rolls repulsive, especially this evening, when they were speckled with the remains of the cookie crumbs he'd eaten for breakfast.

“Your assignment is straightforward,” he told her. “The spies report a new shipment of art has arrived. Can you go tonight?”

New art was something to celebrate. “That's wonderful,” she said. “Yes, of course. Is the Predator Warning System fully operational?”

Randolph blinked. “I've spoken with the monitors myself.”

“Thank you,” said Mary. “And do you know the nature of the picture?”

“A portrait of a male human, purple, I believe, but that is all the scouts have learned. Can you get five copies?”

“Five copies,” Mary repeated. She dipped her snout again, then flipped her tail in farewell. Randolph responded in kind, and Mary was dismissed.

With time before her departure, Mary went to the west sector nursery to retrieve Millie, Margaret, and Matilda. They
were her youngest pups and the only ones still in the nest. Now that Zelinsky was gone, they were probably her last litter. For a treat, she took her girls to the central larder. The human cook, Mrs. Spinelli, had made macaroni and cheese the previous night, and the foragers had brought back a generous supply.

“Mama, do we have to go back to the nursery right now?” Millie asked when they were done eating.

“Wipe your whiskers, dear,” her mother said. “We have a little while. What would you like to do? Go to the playground?”

“Stories!” the three pups chorused.